FAQ
- When (first) orbital flight? First integrated flight test occurred April 20, 2023. “The vehicle cleared the pad and beach as Starship climbed to an apogee of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico – the highest of any Starship to-date. The vehicle experienced multiple engines out during the flight test, lost altitude, and began to tumble. The flight termination system was commanded on both the booster and ship.”
- Where can I find streams of the launch? SpaceX Full Livestream. NASASpaceFlight Channel. Lab Padre Channel. Everyday Astronaut Channel.
- What’s happening next? SpaceX has assessed damage to Stage 0 and is implementing fixes and changes including a water deluge/pad protection/“shower head” system. No major repairs to key structures appear to be necessary.
- When is the next flight test? Just after flight, Elon stated they “Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.” On April 29, he reiterated this estimate in a Twitter Spaces Q&A (summarized here), saying “I’m glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small,” should “be repaired quickly,” and “From a pad standpoint, we are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks.” Requalifying the flight termination system (FTS) and the FAA post-incident review will likely require the longest time to complete. Musk reiterated the timeline on May 26, stating “Major launchpad upgrades should be complete in about a month, then another month of rocket testing on pad, then flight 2 of Starship.”
- Why no flame diverter/flame trench below the OLM? Musk tweeted on April 21: “3 months ago, we started building a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount. Wasn’t ready in time & we wrongly thought, based on static fire data, that Fondag would make it through 1 launch.” Regarding a trench, note that the Starship on the OLM sits 2.5x higher off the ground than the Saturn V sat above the base of its flame trench, and the OLM has 6 exits vs. 2 on the Saturn V trench.
Quick Links
RAPTOR ROOST | LAB CAM | SAPPHIRE CAM | SENTINEL CAM | ROVER CAM | ROVER 2.0 CAM | PLEX CAM | NSF STARBASE
Relevant Reddit threads (though these likely won’t be accessible during the blackout).
Starship Dev 46 | Starship Dev 45 | Starship Dev 44 | Starship Dev 43 | Starship Thread List
Official Starship Update | r/SpaceX Update Thread
Status
Road Closures
No road closures currently scheduled
No transportation delays currently scheduled
Up to date as of 2023-07-09
Resources
- LabPadre Channel | NASASpaceFlight.com Channel
- NSF: Booster 7 + Ship X (likely 24) Updates Thread | Most Recent
- NSF: Boca Chica Production Updates Thread | Most recent
- NSF: Elon Starship tweet compilation | Most Recent
- SpaceX: Website Starship page | Starship Users Guide (2020, PDF)
- FAA: SpaceX Starship Project at the Boca Chica Launch Site
- FAA: Temporary Flight Restrictions NOTAM list
- FCC: Starship Orbital Demo detailed Exhibit - 0748-EX-ST-2021 application June 20 through December 20
- NASA: Starship Reentry Observation (Technical Report)
- Hwy 4 & Boca Chica Beach Closures (May not be available outside US)
- Production Progress Infographics by @RingWatchers
- Raptor 2 Tracker by @SpaceRhin0
- Acronym definitions by Decronym
- Everyday Astronaut: Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
- Everyday Astronaut: 2022 Elon Musk Interviews, Starbase/Ship Updates | Launch Tower | Merlin Engine | Raptor Engine
I’ll attempt to keep this post current with links and major updates, but would be greatly helped by information supplied by the community. I hope this can be an alternate place to discuss Starship development. While the Starship Development Threads on Reddit are not party threads, Lemmy is still small enough that I don’t imagine that strict moderation will be needed in the short term.
Unrolled tweet thread at threadreaderapp.com by Ryan Hansen Space @RyanHansenSpace. It’s a look at the details of the steel plate parts and assembly under the Orbital Launch Mount.
I’m really impressed by how quickly the plate is getting assembled. I didn’t expect the manifolds to get added for another week or so, and now they’re at 2 / 3.
I’m not sure what the bottleneck is at the moment. Once everything is lifted in place they can move B9 over, but they might want to wait until they hit stage adapter is added.
B9 could go through spin prime tests without the plane being ready, and the plate can get tested without all deluge water & gas tanks present. We’re also it sure how far along the other OLM repairs are (cryo pipes are still being replaced). So there’s a ton of stuff happening in parallel.
Musk said that he thought that FAA approval of a new FTS design was likely to be the long pole.
Much lifting and lowering and all sorts of craney stuff, but it’s believed that all the manifolds are in place by now. A nice Imgur picture of a manifold being craned.
Exciting stuff happening right now (See Starbase Live).
- Launch site movement with the SPMT that transported the steel plate for the water deluge system and the SPMT with the Jig!
- Jig is being moved into position and now a crane is being raised! Things are getting exciting this morning.
- At the same time S28 is getting a payload door.
edit: And here’s the latest RGV Flyover video, which is the flyover from last week. Interesting content, but already heavily out of date.
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase live-
8:57am- Black pipe lifted over towards the dog house area (most likely a cryo pipe but couldn’t tell for sure)
9:07am- LR11000 moves a deluge pipe. Lifted over to the work area by where the deluge stand is parked
9:30am- Second deluge pipe lifted. Moved to the same area
9:54am- 3rd deluge pipe moved
10:12am-4th deluge pipe moved (So apparently all of the pipes they moved to the side a couple weeks ago, they’re moving back over to be worked on)
10:20am- Looks like all of the boards have been removed and now they are starting to remove the metal poles of the scaffolding below the OLM.
10:26am- 5th deluge pipe moved. Crane didn’t swing back over this time so the Y pipe looks like it will stay in it’s current position
12:15pm- Scaffolding continues to be removed
2:15pm- Crane is starting to use the bucket to lift loads off of the top of the OLM as well as underneath.
5:15pm- Crane has lowered and left the OLM area. The 2 man lifts that have been working on the scaffolding have also lowered. Work continues around the base of the OLM.
6:30pm- Crane and man lift back up working on the BQD side of the OLM
9:15pm- Fireworks
9:25pm- SPI fireworks
(This gets synced)
I guess I expected today to be a slow day, allowing the concrete to set and with it being a holiday and all.
But nope, full steam ahead. I wonder when they’ll be ready to move that giant plate in?
Awesome shot from below someone under the OLM: https://twitter.com/mktsutherland/status/1676747510931668992
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase live-
11:56pm- 2nd manifold is lifted off it’s stand (Who needs sleep anyways)
12:12am- Manifold is going up after some weight was added to balance the load
12:14:40am- Starts to swing over
12:18am- Lowering. This should go to the left of the plate installed earlier
12:23am- Trying to get it aligned
12:25am- Starting to bring it in closer to the OLM
12:31am- Lowered a bit more. (Looks like they’re at the 10ft mark where they paused for quite a while earlier. So I’m off to bed)
12:45am- Lowered into place.
1:21am- Raised again
1:50am- B10 turns into Massey’s
2:01am- Manifold is lowered again
2:20am- Manifold go up, Basket go down
2:25am- Manifold goes down
2:36am- Basket goes up
2:59am- Basket goes down
3:35am- Small crane swings what may have been the 3rd manifold into place under the OLM
3:51am- Grover moves a piece of small diameter pipe over to the left side of the OLM where the excavators are working
5:30am- LR11000 is disconnected from the manifold section
8:10am- Day shift off to a slow start
9:25am- White pipe is lifted by a small crane over by the berm. RGV’s pictures show that they might be running a new water line from the current vertical tank over to the OLM.
9:32am- LR11000 lifts the counterweight that was used to keep the last manifold level during the lift
11:04am- Basket goes up
11:21am- Retaining wall goes up where they’ve been excavating
11:24am- Basket goes down
11:36am- 2 workers carry a plastic pipe over to the pit being dug by the long reach excavator (if it’s metal, enter those guys in a body building competition)
11:55am- 2 dump truck loads of gravel dumped on the other side of the excavator
12:00pm- Nic is leaving NSF
12:53pm- Basket goes up
1:06pm- Basket goes down
1:24pm- Grover lifts a couple pieces of metal off of the top of the OLM
1:40pm- LR11000 moves another counterweight away from the OLM
2:11pm- LR11000 lifts another counterweight
2:17pm- Small crane lifts a piece of metal out of the excavation pit
2:53pm- In todays adventure of what’s stuck at Starbase. We have a small bulldozer hanging off the side of a low boy trailer.
2:53:54- Random kid says hi
2:58pm- The excavator wins again. Bulldozer is on the trailer.
3:34pm- Grover moves what looks like a long straight piece of rebar over to the cryo pit area
3:49pm- Grover lifts a triangular piece of metal to the top of the OLM.
4:13pm- Grover lifts another triangular piece of metal to the top of the OLM.
4:30pm- Grover lifts more rebar over for the cryo pit lid
4:50pm- Basket goes up (to the door on the side of the OLM)
5:02pm- Rocket cows hack the stream
5:03pm- Basket goes down
5:37pm- Basket goes up
5:44pm- Basket goes down
6:32pm- LR11000 picks up a deluge pipe
6:51pm- Grover swings out of the way
6:57pm- LR11000 Starts swinging deluge pipe over. Straight pipe with a curve on the end closest to the OLM.
6:59pm- Starts lowering pipe to the back left side OLM
7:47pm- Small crane lifts a short piece of pipe next to the bigger piece the LR11000 lifted over
7:51pm- Short piece swung back away
9:00pm- Looks like some work on the lid for the cryo pipe vault. Some people going in and out of the ring around the OLM. They’re hiding what we really want to see behind the tarps though.
9:15pm- LR11000 moves to pick up Y pipe
9:41pm- Lifting straps connected to the crane
9:56pm- Y pipe lifted
9:58pm- Swung around the OLM
10:06pm- Lowered to just above the OLM
10:08pm- Guide rope got stuck on smaller crane. Had to go back up.
10:09pm- Going back down
10:12pm- Sat on the ground right outside the pit.
10:14pm- Lifted Up slightly and rotated
10:15pm- Lowered into the pit
10:25pm- For those wanting to keep track, In Ryan’s renders, we’ve seen the bottom pipe that goes to the middle manifold and the Y section that goes over it lifted in so far. There should be 2 short pieces next to connect the Y to the other 2 manifolds.
(This gets synced)
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase Live-
5:32pm- Plate starts to be lifted off of the moving jig
5:34pm- SPMT starts rolling out from under OLM
5:36:30m- Plate starts to be lowered
5:40pm- Plate starts to be tilted to horizontal
5:48pm- It’s a little close on one corner. Pulling on those guide ropes a little harder
5:54pm- People are walking on the plate
5:56- Looks like they might be measuring the gaps between the plate and legs. Still tension on the lifting straps
5:59pm- SPMT with moving rig is rolling back to the build site. (So strike that as a possibility for tomorrow’s closure)
6:00pm- Slack on the lifting cables. Officially down
7:56pm- Plate lifted back up a couple of feet
8:02pm- Plate lowered
8:05pm- Plate raised again. Stands placed around edges.
8:39pm- Plate raising even higher
9:08pm- Forklift bringing in even higher stands
(This gets synced)
This went much smoother than I expected. I can’t wait to see it from above
Too bad RGV completed their flyover like 3 hours before, we’ll need to wait another week.
“SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket ever built. Its impact is still felt in this Texas community”, a CNN article dated Friday, 7 July 2023.
Musk has repeatedly said he’d like to try to launch Starship again as soon as this summer, but the FAA said in a statement to CNN that SpaceX has yet to take public safety actions or submit a mishap report with corrective actions for FAA review and approval.
Should we now be creating thread #47?
Sounds good. Would you like to do the honours, or shall I?
The Reddit Starship Dev thread is semi-publicly editable by via a Reddit wiki page. Do you know if Lemmy has similar tools? Some way for multiple people to update the post would certainly be useful…
Edit: I have created a new thread.
More pour info, this time from tweets from Zack Golden @CSI_Starbase. The truck counts basically match those from @[email protected]’s post earlier.
SpaceX has received their final load of concrete for today’s Orbital Launch Mount foundation work. Here are the totals after the 15.3 hour marathon:
June 25th - 132 Truck loads
July 3rd - 171 Truck loads
Total Volume = 2,302 m^3 = 3030 yd^3
Total Weight = 5,411 Tons
For reference, a Fully loaded Starship ~ 5,000 Tons
Note: There were 4 additional trucks that showed up but were turned back around without offloading.
Shoutout to agents @VickiCocks15 and @SpmtTracker for keeping track of all these.
4:11 PM · Jul 3, 2023
and
Obviously this number is significantly greater than we predicted. For those who asked, that previous number was not considering the area in yellow, which were also completed today. This area is technically outside of the true foundation of the OLM
with a picture by RGV Aerial Photography.
So am I understanding this correctly that today’s pour was a) directly under the OLM (where the showerhead is going) and b) in the yellow area?
Yes that’s right
The Deluge plates are ready to move to the OLM. Here’s a really nice shot: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1676965314989539328?s=20
New comment from /u/santacfan on Reddit:
Starbase Live-
7:11am- Grover starts to wake up
7:13am- Dance floor drives under OLM
7:22am- Dance floor wings unfolded
7:23am- Grover delivers a cryo pipe over to the doghouse area
7:24am- Dance floor raised into position
7:38am- LR11000 looks like it’s hooked to a manifold
8:23am- Grover delivers another cryo pipe. This time partly up the leg where the cryo pipes run. Looks like they are replacing them through the access holes
9:15am- Lots of concrete being broke up and hauled away by a front end loader
9:39am- The extended reach excavator that had been working in the area where the deluge pipes will go, left.
9:55am- Grover lifts the yellow basket normally used to take down scaffolding to the top of the OLM.
10:33am- Yellow basket brought down
12:00pm- All is quiet on the southern front. Pretty slow day after the last couple.
1:01pm- Grover lifts the yellow basket back up to the OLM
1:31pm- Basket comes down
1:43pm- Basket goes back up
1:46pm- Basket comes back down
1:56pm- Basket goes up
2:02pm- Basket go down
2:07pm- Basket go up
2:15pm- Basket go down
2:30pm- First piece of level 4 for the new mega bay is lifted
2:47pm- Basket go up
2:55pm- Basket go down
3:09pm- Grover lifts a load of something metal up to the top of the OLM
3:25pm- Grover lifts a 2nd load to the top of the OLM
3:42pm- Grover lifts a 3rd load to the top of the OLM
4:07pm- Long reach excavator returns
5:50pm- The LR11000 took tension on the lifting straps that have been connected to the manifold piece all day.
6:24pm- Manifold is lifted
6:25pm- Crane starts swinging towards the OLM
6:29pm- Goes flying over the OLM
6:31pm- Starts lowering
6:34pm- Starts swinging towards bottom of OLM
6:48pm- When looking head on from SBL, it looks like it’s going to the left side of the BQD. So this is the middle manifold. Which based on Ryan’s renders makes sense because the pipe for the far right manifold will run over the pipe for this one
7:06pm- Holding about 10ft above the pad
7:10pm- Starting to tilt the backside down into place
7:30pm- Level it back out and holding around 10ft
7:50pm- Lowered down some more but behind stuff now. Still tension on the straps
7:51pm- B10 starts rolling from the rocket garden
8:16pm- Manifold is raised back up
8:18pm- B10 staged at the end of Remidos
8:21pm- Manifold lowered back down and swung in closer to the pad
8:25pm- Grinding by the doghouse area
8:50pm- Lifting straps on the manifold went slack for a second before they went taunt again. So the plate may be close to/all the way down but the LR11000 still has the weight. If only those tarps weren’t there.
9:00pm- Speaking of the tarps, that area of the plate is where one section of the plugs were. Ryan theorized that they’ll be adding extensions on to these areas… So that might be what’s happening on the other side. We can definitely see some welding going on
9:20pm- 2 small excavators are working on digging a trench for a small pipe
10:27pm- B10 is rolling.
10:33pm- Turns on to hwy 4
10:40pm- They see me rollin, down highway 4, I know they’re all jealous, because I’m off to get all white and frosty. I’m going to get all white and frosty, I’m going to get all white and frosty, wait until you see me all white and frosty, going to look really cold all white and frosty. (Weird Al I am not but Hey it’s been a long day, I’ve got to entertain myself somehow)
11:10pm- 128 wheels tonight. So they added 1 section to each line of SPMT’s after delivering the manifolds.
11:19pm- Time for a break. (Someone read it my version of White and Nerdy and now it refuses to go any further until I delete it)
11:22pm- While we were watching the big shiny thing drive down the road, the LR11000 was unhooked from the manifold section. (It happened at 23:19 on Rover 2)
11:32pm- Straps being hooked to the next manifold piece
11:39pm- B10 is rolling again
11:40pm- Someone didn’t make sure their swing path was clear. Grover swings into one of the cages holding the high pressure gas bottles nearly knocking 2 cages over.
11:47pm- Forklift arrives to move the cages
11:48pm- And just what was Grover doing while this was happening, that’s right,
Basket go down
(This gets synced)
The big plate is on the transport stand and moving under the OLM as we speak.
That was quick! I thought the concrete would have to set a bit longer before taking such a load but apparently not.
#To repeat, new pinned thread:
As @clothes on lemmy.world pointed out: for some reason, via lemmy.world, this 46B thread is still pinned and there’s no sign of 47.